Go to CNN affiliate KTLA for more information.
(CNN) -- A Southern California man who attracted widespread attention for allegedly throwing his 7-year-old son overboard during a harbor cruise was charged Wednesday with felony child abuse and endangerment as well as misdemeanor resisting an officer, the Orange County District Attorney's office said.
Sloan Steven Briles, 35, of Irvine, California, is also accused of being under the influence of alcohol on August 28 when he tossed his son into the path of boat traffic in Newport Beach Harbor, said Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the prosecutor's office.
Briles, who is free on $100,000 bail, is scheduled to be arraigned September 26 in Newport Beach, the prosecutor's office said.
If convicted of both charges, he faces a maximum sentence of six years in prison, authorities said.
Briles recently told a Los Angeles TV news station that he did nothing wrong.
Briles told CNN affiliate KTLA, "We were having fun, it was a harbor cruise!"
He said he did not hit his son and he "did nothing except jump in the water with my kid."
Asked if he would have done the same thing had he not been drinking, Briles responded, "Absolutely."
Briles also disputed the sheriff's and witnesses' account of the event and said it was just a joke.
"We jumped in together," Briles told the affiliate. "We thought it would be funny. We were just screwing around."
Briles, who's divorced, was on the tour boat Queen with his two sons -- the other is age 6 -- when he got into an argument with his girlfriend, the sheriff's office said.
The boat takes passengers past Newport Beach houses that are or were occupied by celebrities, including the home where the late John Wayne lived, authorities said.
His 7-year-old son became upset about the argument and started crying, authorities said.
Briles allegedly poked his 7-year-old son in the chest and repeatedly slapped him in the face, making him cry, prosecutors said in a statement Wednesday. The boy asked his father to stop, prosecutors said.
The father took the boy to the bow of the boat and told him, " 'If you don't stop crying, I'm going to throw you overboard,' " a sheriff's department spokesman said.
The dad then picked up his son and threw him about 10 feet over the side of the tour boat, prosecutors said.
The first mate stalled the vessel and steered it to shield the boy from being struck by another boat, and the captain threw a life ring to the crying boy as he treaded water, prosecutors said.
The father then jumped into the water "to avoid the angry passengers on the Queen who began to yell at him," according to the statement released by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas.
Prosecutors allege the father made "no attempt to swim to his son's aid."
Another passing boat helped the boy out of the water, but the Queen's crew asked that boat "not to help Briles, who was eventually pulled back onto the Queen," the prosecutor's media announcement said.
When sheriff's deputies who patrol the harbor approached Briles on the boat, he allegedly ignored their orders to stand, struggled with them and made his body go limp, prosecutors said.
Deputies had to drag him from the tour boat to the sheriff's harbor patrol boat, prosecutors said.
There were 85 people on the tour boat, authorities said. Deputies took the two boys to their harbor station and later turned them over to their mother, a sheriff's spokesman said.
CNN's Carey Bodenheimer contributed to this report.
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